The Shameless launch party is tomorrow! Come by and grab the new issue, silkscreen your own Shameless gear, win tons of raffle prizes and more!

We’ll have great performances by Lisa Bozikovic, Emma McKenna and DJ Winnie.

Our raffle prize list has seriously gotten out of hand. Here is our list of terrific donors and sponsors:

Good for Her
Groundwood Books
Vintagelove
SK Clothes
Sugarfire Jewellery
Bad Dog Theatre
A Heart Apart
Grapefruit Moon Café
Margie Jewellery Studio
Ariella Meinhard, Acupuncturist and Massage
Worn Magazine
Briarpatch Magazine
Make/Shift Magazine
THIS Magazine
Shaimaa (www.craftabulous.etsy.com)
Shelly Hering
Nicole Cohen
Thea Lim
Myna Wallin
Tightrope Books
Anarres Natural Health Practitioners
Repeating Pig Press

So make sure to come by — March 15 from 1-4 at the Gladstone Hotel. And make sure to say hello!

Yours Shamelessly,

Megan and the Shameless Team

We’re thrilled to be nominated for FOUR Canadian F-Word Blog awards:

Best Canadian Feminist Blog
Best Entertainment Blog
Best Group Blog
The Support Bro: Best support by a male

The first round of voting continues today and tomorrow, so please swing on over and lend us your support. While you’re there, check out some of the other amazing sites that have been nominated.

UPDATE: Sorry, I missed Wesley’s category earlier. He snagged two nominations for this award, congrats, Wesley!

(And I couldn’t wait until “Friday - a fine excuse to post things that we love, which are only sorta kinda about feminism.”)

Remember that little chat we had about the word “douche?” Where I was told “I am a big fan of reappropriation, so douche away, Stacey May”?

Well, it looks like someone has facilitated that by inventing the “Douche Card.”

Tired of arguing with complete morons? Tired of getting into bar room brawls? Well now avoid the confrontation with our glorious Douche Card. Simply hand it to the a**hole in question and walk away. Problem solved.

“Because when you’re a feminist, you know you’d like to hand these out daily.” Thanks goes to Feministing for the holiday gift idea.

Because Fridays have become a fine excuse to post things that we love, which are only sorta kinda about feminism, can I present my new favourite song? I love this so much I could vomit.

Either as super way to congratulate yourself if you had the best week ever, or in a shocking act of defiant optimism if you had a disgusting week, ditch your fashionable cynicism and come sing along with Mary after the jump:

(more inside…)

Ooo, retro!

Seems like a good week for women in Hollywood to speak out against sexism: first Katherine Heigl and now Jennifer Love Hewitt.

On her blog, in response to some allegedly unflattering photos of her that were posted on the internet, Hewitt (or is it Love Hewitt?) said:

I’ve sat by in silence for a long time now about the way women’s bodies are constantly scrutinized. To set the record straight, I’m not upset for me, but for all of the girls out there that are struggling with their body image.

To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini — put it on and stay strong.

I thought it was particularly nice that she says she’s upset on behalf of all of us. Go sisterhood!

Now, when is Britney going to tell the media off?

Watching 30 Rock has inspired a love for Tina Fey that I didn’t know was possible to find in a prime-time female television character (but which may be emerging on a more consistent basis? I don’t watch enough TV to comment accurately on the matter). And I’m not the only one, the internet is full of love for Fey and her character, Liz Lemon.

Lemon, who’s in charge of a big network sketch comedy show, is hilarious and smart, totally dorky and totally real. I love so many scenes where her feminist sensibility emerges in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, but the scene in which she gets the guy is one of my absolute favourites (a close second is the one in which she — who is very single — buys a wedding dress because it’s on sale, then eventually rolls it up in a ball and uses it to prop up the leg of an Ikea desk she finally put together but which doesn’t quite work).

I can’t find a clip of the video, which is sad, as it truly is great. But here are some of the things she reveals to Floyd, the guy she’s after:
• She’s been sexually rejected by two guys who later attended Clown College.
• She gets super-nervous at the sound of vacuuming, which her mother used to mask the sounds of parental fights.
• She almost never – okay, never – vacuums as a result.
• She’s already had three donuts today.
• During college, “I pooped my pants, a little bit, at a Country Steaks All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, and I didn’t leave until I finished my second plate of shrimp.”
• A couple of months ago, she went on a date with her cousin.
• There is an 80% chance in the next election that she will tell all her friends she is voting for Barack Obama, while she secretly votes for John McCain.
• When she was a kid, she would put on her fanciest nightgown, mix orange soda and cream soda in a champagne glass, sit in the dark and watch, “The Love Boat.”
• Consequently, she has “sexual fantasy stuff” for Gopher.
• She lied. She’s had five donuts.

Amazing! And she gets the guy. Here are some other awesome Liz Lemon moments.

Fey, who also writes and produces for the show (and as a result has been called “a rising player in what has been a man’s game”) has been on the picket line during the Writer’s Guild strike (even though as an actor/producer she had to finish her obligations!) and has been articulate and outspoken about issues facing writers and other workers in the industry. Be still my beating heart.

You know, it’s not often that you go to a rock show and hear a performer drop lines like, “So I decided to take the advice of my friend, Elvis Presley…”

Last Friday I had the chance to hit two really great birds with one stone - I got to see my buddies The Stolen Minks (how can you not love a band whose lyrics include the lines “Girls on the stage and boys on the floor!” and “Batman, you’re the sex!”?) open for Wanda Jackson, on Jackson’s 70th birthday. And even though this will reveal me as a horrible phoney for being at her show in the first place, on Friday I also finally figured out just who Jackson is.

Wanda Jackson, as I discovered, is the First Lady of Rock and Roll. What that means is that she was the first girl to ever get up on stage with a guitar and rock out. That may not sound like a big deal, but just think about what life was like in 1954 for ladies, and then think about the kind of guts you’d have to have to get up on a stage and rock and roll if you were a lady back then.

It’s kinda interesting that Jackson is not more well-known. I can tell you all sorts of things about Elvis Presley and Bruce Springsteen (two boys who’ve waxed at length about how great she is), but until Friday I was only distantly familiar with Jackson. Could it be, ahem, at least in part because she’s a lady? I wonder…

Elvis Costello seems to think so. As he says in a letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame asking them to once and for all induct Jackson:

For heaven’s sake, the whole [Hall] risks ridicule and having the appearance of being a little boy’s club unless it acknowledges the contribution of one of the first women of rock and roll.

(more inside…)

Finally, there’s some research to back up your “Feminists-do-it-better” T-shirt. According to this piece in the Globe and Mail, two academics at Rutgers University set out to bust the stereotype that feminists are “romantically challenged” in heterosexual love and lust.

Make of this what you will, but their study found that women who identify as feminist are more likely than women who don’t to be dating or married, and that “men and women with feminist partners tend to be happier with their relationships and more satisfied with their sex lives.”

Pretty cool study. Also cool to see it on the front page of the Globe‘s Life section — it’s pretty to see the F-word in a headline.

Watch this fantastic clip from Talk, the short film released by the UK Disability Rights Commission in 2000. The film envisions a world where abled people are minority who are either pitied or discriminated against, while people with disabilities lead full lives.

The thing that I love about this clip is how it points out that life for a person with a disability is not difficult because of their disability, but because they live in an environment that doesn’t regard their basic needs as important. As in, the problem is not the person with the disability, it’s the environment.
(more inside…)